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Biography…

Humble, quiet, introspective. All could apply to Juan Alban, the softly spoken but gifted frontman and principal songwriter for Ballarat’s favourite sons Epicure. The singer isn’t saying directly what prompted the theme of his band’s latest album Postcards From A Ghost. Suffice to say, it’s personal. “It’s not really something I would like to talk about now…” He trails off. “I guess ‘heartbreak’ kind of covers it.”

He goes on. “Towards the end of Main Street, (Epicure’s last album) I was going through a hard time personally, and that’s when I wrote some of the earlier songs like Landslide and How This Will End. I was kind of conceiving the album then. It’s not strictly a concept album, but lyrically I’ve tried to keep it all tied-in together.

“A lot of the lyrics are written from the perspective of a character who, I guess, had something traumatic happen to them and just doesn’t bounce back from it the way people probably do when they are young. This character is getting older, and a bit more slighted about things.

“I think it’s our angriest record,” asserts Juan. “The other albums might be sadder sounding compared with this, but there’s definitely a lot of anger in this one. Lyrically, anyway. I think it’s the most sinister and darkest thing we’ve done. But it’s also our best sounding album.”

Hence the title of Epicure’s fifth album, Postcards From A Ghost. “I suppose it’s about a character who’s left feeling like a ghost. As though they were invisible, see-through, or scarred in some way. If you send somebody a postcard, then it sort of tells them where you’ve been. I guess, this album is that postcard, and I like how the title conveyed that.”

Whether or not that ‘character’ is himself, Juan won’t deny nor confirm. “I don’t really like to talk about the lyrics too much because it kind of sounds self-involved,” he adds quite rightly, pointing out that everything he wants to express about the experience is already crystallised perfectly within the songs themselves, albeit channelled through his melancholic protagonist. “I’m kind of aware that most Epicure songs already have this inherent sadness, and even I kind of get over it after a while. So I don’t like to push that kind of angle too much.”

For a band that writes such sad songs, Epicure make a lot of people very happy. Forming in high school in the late ‘90s, the band cut their teeth on the local pub circuit and released a clutch of well-received EPs. Many of these contained songs revisited in different forms in later albums, Fold (2000), Airmail (2001), and most recently, the critically acclaimed The Goodbye Girl (2003) and Main Street (2005). The latter two albums enjoyed considerable triple j rotation on the basis of such strong singles as Armies Against Me, Self Destruct In 5, Life Sentence and Tightrope Walker. It’s fair to say the band enjoy a cult following well beyond their regional hometown.

And now, with the release of 2008’s Postcards From A Ghost, Epicure have released their best album to date. Immaculately crafted, sonically gorgeous, and imbued with all their trademark beautiful melancholy, the new album sees the band write the best songs of their career. Talk about a gold rush; this little ole band from Ballarat have gone and recorded a truly world class album.

Produced and mixed by Lindsay Gravina (Shihad/Magic Dirt), Postcards From A Ghost see-saws and saunters between alternative rock and alt-country, and is steeped in rich, warm bluesy guitar tones. All up, it’s a rootsier, rockier affair.

“One thing with this record, I wanted it to sound like a band playing,” explains Juan. “Lindsay’s known as more of a rock producer, and it felt right to emphasise that aspect of the band. To capture a bit more energy and intenseness. A lot of the reviews of Main Street said it was slow, sad and a little bit boring. I guess, it sounded more like a singer songwriter album. But live, we’re not a boring band, so I wanted to
make sure that we got that across on record. We wanted to be closer to what we sound like live.”

Juan recognises the dual palettes of alterno-rock and alt-country on Postcards From A Ghost. “They were the two biggest influences in my musical life. When I was teenager I was into the whole kind of Seattle thing, but later on I got into the Americana and alt-country stuff, and at the moment that’s what I really like listening to. I guess that’s why it sounds like that.”

Gravina succeeded in capturing both that dichotomy and that dynamic perfectly. “Lindsay was good at making sure everything was very tight. He’s great at guitar sounds, and he helped Mick (Hubbard, new Epicure guitarist, ex Jen Cloher’s Endless Sea) and I with getting the right tone. In the past, we sort of became friends with the producers we had, but with Lindsay, it was more like a business thing. I think he just kept us honest and made sure we put down the best thing we could.“As a consequence, I think it’s the best sounding album we’ve done.”

He’s not wrong. From the opening sinewy rocker Snakes And Foxes, it’s clear Epicure have stepped things up a notch. It’s a more muscular, solid and unabashed guitar-heavy sound; Dom Santamaria’s driving drums and Tim Bignell’s sonorous bass tones provide the rhythmic spine to the song, just as Juan’s bitter-sweet melodies and keyboardist Heath McCurdy’s tinkling ivories and passionate Hammond solo lifts the tune into the final glorious refrain.

In One Last Chance To Reach You, the countrified patter of the drums and the slide gee-tar see the band wear their Americana influences on their sleeves, while through the languid shuffle and dark imagery of Empire In Decline, Juan’s character applies the metaphor of decaying civilisation to his own dead relationship. But it’s the tender lament of Landslide, where Juan’s exquisite falsetto rings out through the mournful piano-line of the chorus, that’s the first album highlight. And where Landslide is a beautiful lovelorn ballad, it’s sister piece in Sick Hearts Parade has a more countryish-feel, as the jilted broken-hearted character tries to bargain his way back to his lover in vain.

With Juan’s melismatic melody-line in the chorus, Soft Place To Fall has single written all over it; the light acoustics seguing seamlessly into light-filled melody, sweeping chord progressions, pounding drums and honky-tonk piano. But it’s the song’s inspired guitar solo, courtesy of new guitarist Mick Hubbard, that takes the prize. The leadman’s slow-hand burn and bluesy flair is now a lynchpin in Epicure’s sound.
“Mick’s great,” enthuses Juan. “He has that country kind of style, but also little bit more edge, which works really well with the rockier songs. He’s done some great guitar solos on this record, which I think is a hard thing to do. He really did revitalise the band.”

If there’s a definitive point in the genesis of the new record, Juan says it was when he wrote Ghosts Under The Guillotine, a song with a ragged folk aesthetic that slowly builds into a giant glorious climax of searing, soaring guitars. “It covers all the spectrums that Epicure has; the soft kind of acoustic stuff, and at the end of the song, a kind of really wild discordant urgency. We’ve been accused of being a bit boring, but when we wrote that song I thought it’s not something Epicure had done before.”

Blood On My Hands boasts an almost Black Crowes feel, treading the balance between soulful r’n’b and bloozy rock, just as a the spine-tingling Bless This Mess bleeds slowly into the dark parable of When That Hurricane Blows Through, a stripped-back country tune ripe with Old Testament imagery, as Juan sings every stanza in a frayed broken voice. Beautiful stuff.

The jaunty piano riff and pop sensibility of the album’s first single Cobra Kisses, has lost none of its appeal within the context of the album, while Loves Me Not is an up-tempo stomp rocker, featuring raw scraping guitar, a snarling blues lick, and a thrumming open-throated chorus from Juan. The album closes with the heartfelt paean of How This Will End; sweetly masochistic and sonically lush, the stunning gospel harmonies courtesy of guest vocalists Liz Stringer, Mia Dyson and Epicure’s ex-guitarist (and Juan’s best friend) Dan Houlihan, make it powerful song to end on.

Postcards From A Ghost is intelligent music. Music that reveals itself slowly with multiple listens. It’s there in the arrangement, the musicality, and the intuitive dynamic to the instrumentation. And it’s there, of course, in Juan’s poetic lyrics. “We try not to dumb it down,” acknowledges Juan. “It’s important to us that we can listen to it and not wince later, you know? We all listen to a lot of music and we all know what really good music is, so I guess we try our best. Lyrically, I like to not cringe when I listen to it or when I
read it. That’s probably most important to me.”

It’s been three years since Main Street, and Juan puts down the slow gestation of the new album to one thing: Epicure are perfectionists. “We wanted to release a really good record,” he stresses. “At the time we released Cobra Kisses [Postcard’s preview single released in late 2007], I wasn’t sure if we had the songs yet to release an album. It was through that, that Snakes And Foxes, Empire In Decline and One
Last Chance To Reach You came about. I think once we kind of wrote them, it kind of felt like there was enough variety for the record. It was more meaningful.”

So then, could we describe Epicure as a roots band these days? “Well, I’m a little bit suspicious of the term ‘roots band’, but that’s okay, I think,” Juan laughs. “I mean, but I don’t know if there are any other bands in Australia doing this kind of thing. Which is a good thing, isn’t it?”

Damn straight, it is.
- NICK SNELLING